Keeping that Kerouac streak alive

I New Year's Kerouac-olutioned that I'd blog once a week (always, of course, related to Kerouac either directly or in some roundabout way), and this second full week of January is looking for a post in order to keep the streak alive (having posted the 1st, 7th, and 9th but not during this 2nd full week).

So here I sit staring at the blank screen and racking my brain trying to find something to post about that hasn't already been said a million times and has some remote value to Daily Beat readers.

I know: when in doubt, quote Kerouac.

If I had a buckskin stallion
I'd tame him down and ride away

Wait a minute. Crafty readers will know that's not Kerouac, and very crafty readers will know it's a lyric from a song by one of the best songwriters to ever grace this planet, Mr. Townes Van Zandt. I was listening to his "Best of..." CD in the car on the way home from the hand surgeon* this morning and I swore I was going to use that line somehow in the near future. Mission accomplished. And here's a link you might appreciate: Buckskin Stallion Blues.

But back to Jack. How about a quote from the 23rd page of Visions of Gerard? Why 23? It's a mystical number we've opined about before here at The Daily Beat (click here).

One night we're on the kitchen floor with the Boston American, I remember distinctly the pinksheet Hearst evening news, on the front page is the photo of a woman who's murdered someone, I take my scissors and stab her right in the eye impaling the paper on the linoleum--"Non non Ti Jean never do that!" Didn't understand (as I remember myself) the glee, the mindless happy glee that went into that vigorous stab--But to Gerard the mindlessness was precisely the horror and the currency of a hateful hopeless world....

How could a quote be more acutely relevant, given the mindless horror of the hateful hopeless world we live in, especially of late? Mindlessness. The opposite of which is mindfulness. The salvation of our world starts with each of us -- individually -- becoming mindful.

Svaha.

*Why the hand surgeon? During an annual check-up to get things burned off my skin, my dermatologist thought I might have a lesion under the fingernail of the middle finger of my left hand. Concerned that it might be cancer, or worse -- that it might prevent me from giving people the bird with my left hand -- she referred me to a hand surgeon. Said hand surgeon gave it the once-over and proclaimed, "I'm underwhelmed." The upshot is that he found nothing to worry about and I simply need to keep an eye on it. If it gets worse, starts to hurt, etc., I should give him a call.